(Co)construção de referências em atendimentos em balcão: processos de referenciação multimodal em interações sociais

Abstract

Considering customer services at shop counters, it is common sense that when the approximation of a client occurs, the responsible shop assistant orients to help the consumer, seen that the selection of the desired product(s) requires assistance. During the process of choosing products, which are placed and visually accessible at the shop counter and/or in its surroundings, (co)constructions of references are frequent (MONDADA, 2015). These (co)constructed referencing processes result in the copresence of the referred item through physical or linguistic resources (CLARK; MARSHALL, 1981). However, what are the actions (performed through linguistic and embodied resources) involved in the referencing processes and how are they organized? These are the questions that mobilize this study, supported by the Multimodal Conversation Analysis (CA) (SACKS; SCHEGLOFF; JEFFERSON, 1974; MONDADA, 2014) and Interactional Linguistics (IL) (COUPER KUHLEN; SELTING, 2017) theoretical-analytical approaches. Referencing, in the analyzed context, requires the achievement of intersubjectivity between the participants for the facilitation of the progressivity of the service. Looking forward to analyzing and describing the distinct trajectories in which the referencing projects are (co)constructed, 54 video recorded naturalistic interactions that took place at a butcher’s counter of a supermarket were analyzed. The results show that (1) speakers reformulate their turns of talk as well as perform embodied actions with the purpose of facilitating the mutual orientation to the referent; (2) the orientation of the costumers to the visual field that is available (or unavailable) in the interactional space influences the referencing trajectory; (3) when needed, reference repairs accomplished by the speakers include the provision of additional information or the revision and modification of descriptions previously provided. The referencing processes in the context studied also interactionally evidence when client and attendant know each other, through the frequency in which the consumer realizes purchases on the commercial establishment and/or through sharing other spaces of interaction. Considering the absence of studies that investigate the services at shop counters in spoken Brazilian Portuguese from a linguistic-interactional multimodal perspective, the findings of this research can enlighten and enlarge our understanding of the complexities involved in the (co)construction of references.